Solar System[VR]

Platform: Oculus Rift with Oculus Touch

Time Spent: 3 weeks

Prototype Solar System is a Virtual Reality experience in Oculus Rift that aims to act as a visualization of classes and object instances. In this prototype, the player will be able to create their own planet class, customize the class, and instantiate planet classes into planet objects. The player will see the instantiated planets orbiting in front of them in the VR space.

Our team believes people can get better understanding of class, object and instantiation via crafting their own planet class, instantiating their own planets, and watching them come to life in the virtual world.

The team consists of 3 people including one designer and 2 programmers. I worked as the programmer who scripted for all object(planets, sun, orbits) behaviors and UI responses. Also, I functioned as the artist that made all the models using Blender and set up lighting and particle systems. After going through the design process of this prototype, we got good experience on designing interactions for oculus touch as well as metaphors that could use to convey abstract Computer Science concepts. (And the best part for me is naming those planets using their parent class’s hash code…)

We are moving onto the next prototype which uses a intuitive hanging flag game to help demonstrate linked list.